


it’s rotten work (not to me)

by givebackmylifecas



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, First Heist, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26552248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givebackmylifecas/pseuds/givebackmylifecas
Summary: Tokyo uses the loud noise as cover to push open the door a crack – just enough to be able to see into the room. Palermo is sat in bed, legs and most of his torso covered by blankets. Berlin is sat behind him against the headboard, arms around Palermo’s upper body, legs bracketing his hips under the covers, and he looks to be physically propping him up. Palermo sighs and tips his head back onto Berlin’s shoulder when the other man rubs his chest with the flat of his hand.Just Berlin and Palermo looking after each other
Relationships: Background, Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote, Denver | Daniel Ramos/Mónica Gaztambide
Comments: 16
Kudos: 189





	it’s rotten work (not to me)

**Author's Note:**

> i bashed this out in three and a half hours please don't judge me
> 
> TWs for: non-threatening illness, canon-typical injuries, 
> 
> fic title from the euripides' 'orestes' quote.

Tokyo isn’t sure what to think about the rest of the gang. She trusts the Professor, believes that he trusts everyone else, but she wouldn’t have gotten as far as she did, if she weren’t suspicious of strangers.

Rio is sweet and good looking, Denver is an idiot but easy to control, Nairobi could be a friend – as could Moscow – and Helsinki and Oslo seem alright, even though they don’t talk much. But it’s the two other men, Berlin and Palermo, that she can’t get a read on.

Berlin is an arsehole, that becomes clear quickly. He leers laciviously at both her and Nairobi, and smirks whenever the Professor talks. He always comes to class in suits like he’s about to go to the opera and he sets her teeth on edge from the very beginning.

Palermo is an asshole too, but not in the same way. He carries his arrogance differently to Berlin. Berlin acts like he’s God’s gift to the world, whereas Palermo seems like he loves himself because no one else will. He openly flirts too, with Helsinki, with Denver, even with Rio once – just not with Berlin.

They’re close, that much she can see but she doesn’t know in what way. She doesn’t think they’re related, Palermo is South American after all, but they don’t seem like friends either. Something about the two of them and the way they behave around each other nags at her, and she carefully files each piece of information about them away. The way Berlin looks at the rest of them as if they’re dirt under his expensive shoes, but doesn’t hesitate to drink from Palermo’s coffee cup. How Palermo looks as if he’d like to murder them all when they ask questions about his calculations, but just smirks when Berlin interrupts him mid-sentence. But still she can't pinpoint their relationship.

In fact, it’s not until two weeks before the heist that she really gets an insight into their relationship, because Palermo gets sick.

They’ve all had mornings when they wake up with a stuffed nose and a sore throat, but it usually goes away within a few days. Palermo though, he develops a cough that sticks around. It starts with him clearing his throat every few minutes in class which has the Professor glaring at him and Nairobi and Denver exchanging annoyed glances. He starts downing honeyed tea like it’s water from the fountain of youth, but it doesn’t help. Instead, things get worse, developing into a harsh, painful sounding cough that rattles up from deep in Palermo’s chest and has even Tokyo wincing in sympathy when he gasps for breath and waves off Moscow’s attempts to help.

The problem is that Tokyo would be a lot more sympathetic, if her and Palermo’s rooms weren’t next to each other. As it is, she’s kept up most nights by his hacking and any sympathy she feels is swallowed by the irritation that sleep-deprivation brings with it.

As tired as she feels, Palermo looks worse, dragging himself into the classroom every day with dark circles under his eyes and none of his usual swagger. On the sixth night of listening to Palermo half-asphyxiate, Tokyo rolls out of bed and digs around in her backpack for her stash of heavy duty muscle-relaxants. She’s no doctor, but she’s fairly sure you can’t cough if all your muscles are unable to spasm.

She grabs the little baggy of pills and ventures out into the hallway. She’s just raised her hand to knock on Palermo’s door when she hears voices.

At first she can’t make out who it is or what they’re saying, since the words are drowned out by yet another one of Palermo's attempts to cough up his lungs. She inches closer to the door when the person speaks again and she recognises the voice as Berlin’s.

“You need to go to the doctor, mi amor,” he says and Tokyo nearly drops the bag of pills in surprise.

She slowly mouths the words mi amor as Palermo coughs again.

“No,” Palermo says, voice hoarse when he manages to catch his breath. “We can’t risk being seen.”

He coughs again and Tokyo uses the loud noise as cover to push open the door a crack – just enough to be able to see into the room. Palermo is sat in bed, legs and most of his torso covered by blankets. Berlin is sat behind him against the headboard, arms around Palermo’s upper body, legs bracketing his hips under the covers, and he looks to be physically propping him up. Palermo sighs and tips his head back onto Berlin’s shoulder when the other man rubs his chest with the flat of his hand.

Tokyo was fairly sure already, that their relationship isn’t anywhere close to platonic and Berlin pressing a kiss to Palermo’s forehead only confirms that.

“I don’t think that matters, cariño,” Berlin says. “You’re sick, you can hardly breathe, and I know for a fact the kids have been sneaking out to go drinking. They’ll each have been seen by at least a hundred people, so you going to a doctor under a fake name will hardly matter.”

Palermo tries to sigh, but emits a whistling sort of wheeze instead. “Alright. But you get to tell Sergio.”

“Fuck Sergio,” Berlin scoffs. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him and you can hardly successfully help him with his heist, if you’re unable to breathe.”

“Fine, fine,” Palermo acquiesces and Berlin smiles smugly, pressing another kiss to the side of his head,

“I’ll take you first thing tomorrow.”

Palermo nods and lets Berlin push his sweaty hair back from his face. “Alright, but for tonight, will you stay?”

Berlin smiles in a way that softens his entire face and Tokyo would almost think it sweet if he weren’t so creepy usually. “Of course, try and sleep now Martín.”

Palermo mumbles his agreement, already looking mostly asleep and Tokyo takes that as her cue to leave, shuffling away from the door as quietly as she can.

Back in her room, she drops the pills onto her nightstand and tries to figure out just how she’d missed this.

* * *

Nairobi isn’t sure how things went to shit quite so quickly, but Tokyo is out of the mint and in the hands of the police, Rio spent ages high on hallucinogenic sedatives, and something odd is going on with Denver. Not to mention the fact that Berlin is behaving like the biggest megalomaniac around during the Professor’s absence.

It’s not until after Berlin tries to kill Rio and she decides to take control of the gang that she remembers Palermo, who had been waiting by the phone for them. She hits Berlin with the butt of her rifle and he crumples to the ground - and then Palermo smacks her clear across the face.

She drops the phone in shock and she can still hear the Professor yelling, voice small and tinny, when Palermo aims his pistol at her. She looks to Helsinki for help, but he looks reluctantly indecisive.

“I’m giving you one chance to walk away and I’ll forget this ever happened,” Palermo says, the calmness of his voice, belying the anger in his eyes. “Walk away, go back to overseeing the money printing, or I’ll shoot you and dump your body out the window for the police to collect.”

She glances down at Berlin’s unmoving form on the floor, then back up to Palermo and the barrel of the pistol he’s still pointing at her. Unlike Berlin, his hand doesn’t shake.

“Nairobi,” Helsinki says quietly and she nods, takes a step away from Palermo and then another.

Her heart doesn’t stop racing until the door closes behind her and Helsinki and she’s halfway to the printing presses.

“He was out of control,” she says. “I had to do something.”

Helsinki stays silent, but he doesn’t look convinced.

“He was going to kill Rio!” she insists and Helsinki sighs.

“I know, but he’s our leader. We need to obey his orders,” he says.

Nairobi shakes her head. “No, he’s not my leader. The Professor is.”

“And the Professor said that Berlin is our leader inside the mint,” he counters evenly.

Nairobi scoffs. “Well, unlike you, I don’t just blindly follow orders!”

Helsinki blinks at her, hurt colouring his gaze and she sighs.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” she says.

“Yes, you did,” Helsinki replies, before turning and leaving her alone outside the offices where their bags and bags of cash are waiting for them to grab them and run.

She scowls, stuffing her hands in her pockets and that’s when she realises that she still has Berlin’s painkillers, but she doesn’t have her gun.

“Fuck,” she mutters to herself.

She really, really doesn’t want to go back into a room with Berlin and Palermo, but on the other hand, she needs her gun. She sighs and goes back the way she came as slowly as she can, trying to drag out the journey, hoping it’ll give Palermo time to cool down enough to no longer want her dead.

When she stops outside the meeting room, she can’t hear any voices so she knocks loudly and walks in without waiting to be asked – she’s not going to ask permission from either of them. Berlin is stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed, with Palermo kneeling on the floor next to him, pressing a clump of tissues to Berlin’s head.

When Nairobi walks in, Palermo immediately gets to his feet, a scowl etched onto his face.

“What do you want?” he demands and she raises her hands defensively.

“Hey, calm down, Palermo,” she says placatingly. “I’m just here to get my gun.”

“Why?” Palermo sneers. “Planning on clubbing someone else?”

Nairobi bites the inside of her cheek to refrain from snapping at him. “No. I also came to give you these.”

She holds up the bag of painkillers, stepping back when Palermo immediately makes a grab for them.

“Give them to me,” he demands and she shakes her head.

“Why? They don’t belong to you.”

Palermo glares daggers at her. “Well, they’d be better off with me than you. Hand them over. Now.”

Considering that less than half an hour ago, Palermo was holding a gun to her head, Nairobi decides not to push him anymore and relents. She hands over the painkillers and Palermo immediately inspects them, as if checking she hasn’t messed with them.

He crosses the room to get the kit from which she had originally stolen Berlin’s medication and pulls out a syringe.

He takes one of the vials out of the bag, and uses the syringe to empty one of the vials. He then grabs one of Berlin’s hands and makes to inject him.

“Hey,” Nairobi says. “What are you doing? You can't just inject him randomly.”

He gives her an unimpressed look, before pressing the plunger and emptying the medication into Berlin’s bloodstream.

“Shut up,” he says, when she protests again. “I’m not just injecting him for fun - he missed a dose.”

Nairobi blinks. “You know his schedule?”

Palermo rolls his eyes so hard, she wonders he doesn’t have an aneurysm. “Someone has to.”

He carefully recaps the syringe and puts it to one side before lifting Berlin’s head and sitting down with it repositioned on his lap.

Nairobi gapes at how tenderly Palermo handles the other man, almost like they’re – except that doesn’t make sense because Berlin has been harassing the female hostages since the moment they got there.

“If you’re going to stand about, you might as well get me some more tissues and a bandage or gauze from the first aid kit,” Palermo says, looking up at her and she startles, but does as she’s asked.

She watches as Palermo wets the tissues with water from one of the bottles and carefully wipes at the back of Berlin’s head. Then he presses a thick wad of gauze to the wound, before winding a bandage around his head to secure it.

“He’ll be okay,” she says unprompted, but for some reason feeling the need to reassure Palermo. “I didn’t hit him that hard.”

He smirks, lips curling even as he keeps his eyes on Berlin’s lax face. “Oh, I know. You really think you’d still be alive if you had?”

* * *

Palermo hasn’t stopped swearing since they got to the beach. It’s not loud, just a long string of curse words that are continually muttered under his breath and Denver would laugh if it weren’t sort of annoying.

He and Mónica – Stockholm as she now insists on being called – had come down for a swim right after breakfast and now she’s stretched out on the sand next to him, looking like everything he’d never thought he’d be able to have. She isn’t showing yet, but Denver’s convinced he can see a slight curve to her tanned stomach.

Her hair is piled up on top of her head in a bun and he’d been watching her sleep when Palermo and Berlin joined them.

Unlike Denver and Stockholm, they’ve brought a basket from which Berlin had produced a blanket and insisted on spreading it onto the ground before he sat down – which is when the swearing started. Because Berlin got out of the mint with a bullet hole in his arm, but Palermo had a whole bullet embedded in his knee that wasn’t removed until they got off the cargo ship in some coastal town on an island in the Indian Ocean.

He’s still on unwieldy crutches and has spent the last five minutes trying to figure out how to sit down without aggravating his wound. Every time Berlin reaches towards him or tries to get up again, the cursing gets louder.

“Palermo, either shut up and let Berlin help you or go away,” Denver complains. “You’re going to wake Stockholm.”

Palermo’s mouth shuts with an audible click and he scowls at Denver. Berlin smirks.

“I hate to say it, but young Denver is right, Palermo. There’s an obvious solution to this conundrum, Liebling,” he says.

Palermo continues to glare but also seems to blush. “Shut up, you know I hate when you speak German.”

Berlin’s smirk grows. “Do you? That’s not what you said when –”

“Shut up!” Palermo snaps, flushing a darker shade of red. “Both of you get up and help me sit down.”

Berlin gets to his feet with a grin and Denver sighs, untangling his fingers from Stockholm’s to join him. Berlin wraps an arm around Palermo’s waist and the other man drops his crutches. Denver stands on Palermo’s other side and hooks their arms together. Slowly, he and Berlin lower Palermo onto the blanket.

It doesn’t escape his notice that Palermo blanches, eyes pained – and it clearly doesn’t get past Berlin either. Once Palermo is settled on the blanket, Berlin rummages in his basket and pulls out a packet of pills and a bottle of the pink lemonade Nairobi had inexplicably bulk bought.

“Take them,” he says, handing two pills to Palermo who groans.

“I don’t want to,” he protests. “They make me drowsy.”

Berlin shrugs, opening the lemonade. “So take a nap. We have no other plans for today and I know you’re in pain.”

“Andrés,” Palermo says pleadingly, but Berlin ignores him.

He picks the pills back up out of the other man’s hand and promptly shoves them into Palermo’s mouth. Palermo’s eyes widen and Denver sniggers as Berlin just hands him the bottle of lemonade.

“Don’t you dare spit those out,” Berlin threatens and for the first time since they left, Denver sees a flash of the man he was in the mint.

Palermo takes a drink and swallows, then opens his mouth demonstratively.

“Lift your tongue,” Berlin orders.

Palermo shoots him a dirty look, but does as he’s told.

“Really?” Denver sniggers when Berlin nods approvingly.

Berlin raises his eyebrow. “Didn’t you convince Stockholm not to get an abortion?”

Denver frowns. “Yeah, I want what’s best for her.”

“Exactly,” Berlin says as if that explains everything.

Denver sits back down next to Stockholm, hand finding hers again, and he smiles to see that despite the commotion she’s still asleep. When he looks back over, Berlin has stretched out on the blanket with a book in his hand. Palermo is lying down too, with an arm flung over his eyes and his head resting on Berlin’s stomach.

Fifteen minutes later and Berlin hasn’t made the other man move. Instead, he's stroking his hair, similarly to how Denver likes to stroke Mónica’s.

“Oh,” Denver says loudly, making Stockholm stir and Berlin make a shushing noise that Denver usually associates with teachers.

When he doesn’t stop staring at them, Berlin puts his book down and sighs.

“What, Denver?” he asks impatiently.

Denver looks down at Palermo. “You two… does anyone else know?”

Berlin rolls his eyes. “Well, since the Professor was at the wedding, I’m assuming he knows.”

“I think Nairobi knows too,” Palermo mumbles without moving the arm off his face.

“I thought you were asleep,” Berlin says fondly and Denver sees Palermo smirk.

Denver continues to frown at them and Palermo sighs. “Don’t overthink it, Denver. It’s just like you and Stockholm – we look after each other.”

“Right,” Denver says slowly. “Like me and Stockholm… and like Tokyo and Rio.”

“No,” Palermo and Berlin say simultaneously.

Denver laughs and shakes his head, lying back down next to Stockholm. He wonders if Tokyo or Rio would believe him if he told them about Palermo and Berlin.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked this maybe? i would love it if you'd leave kudos or comment - and as always you can yell at me on tumblr ([@hefellfordean](https://hefellfordean.tumblr.com)) or twitter ([@angstypalermo](https://twitter.com/angstypalermo)) if you like


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